Charlie's office
The warlords refer to the late-middle-aged gunsmith as "WW", "Billy Wally", "Old Walt", "Old Bill", or simply "the gunsmith". Actually Charles Adolph, prefers Charlie, was a preacher man who "rode the circuit" and tried to keep the ranchers from "killin' one another". Charlie was taken a liking to by the wrong crowd - Beauchamp's crowd. * "I don't consider myself a clever man, young miss, but I think I got a pretty good idea of who you are. He thinks your're dead, we even got delivered a body." Full story: # "Chelish rule in Galt had structure for farmers and ranchers. While they didn't own the land they worked, the lords were expected to support their workers during droughts and famines, financially and otherwise. This stability gave them comfort to work even when times were tough. After the revolutions, land reform saw ranchers working for landlords who felt those expectations didn't apply to them and left their workers out to dry. Other ranchers bought the land they worked and ran independently, many of them selling the first time their income couldn't pay the taxes." # "I was riding the circuit in the final years of this time, tending to farmers, owners, drovers, sundowners, and vagrants. But prior to that, I issued last rites in prisons and trying to help change prisoners' ways, and that was where I first met Beauchamp. Who, until now, had been a regular old outlaw: a highwayman, rustler, robber, all-round snake living off the hard work of others but also a man with cunning and a way with people." # "Beauchamp looked to capitalise on the situation - by uniting the ranchers in a cooperative with grand ideas of profit sharing and storing capital to ride out the tough times together. It was a time of hope and change and Galtans had just witnessed ordinary folk change their lot with only good ideas, a voice, and the support of their peers... Or perhaps that's just my excuse for not having been wiser when it happened." # "Ranchers were paying contributions to work their own land, money that found itself in Beauchamp's coffers. Bailing them out happened so rarely that a lot of the money he took himself - calling it managerial income and dividends on shares. Beauchamp started this coop with no lands or livestock of his own. A decade later, he was the major stakeholder. Another decade saw him become the sole owner of more land than the coop had started out with. And that's how the farmers and ranchers unwittingly - or at least unintentionally - elected their own cattle baron." # "One revolution saw religion outlawed, which was how I ended up working for Beauchamp who recognised me from prison all those years ago. He had me put my locksmithing skills to work crafting guns for him and his men. He said his most talented gunsmith was losing her touch" ## if asked: "- a Mrs. Mary Holms that would be..." # "I only met her the once and I remember the night very clearly. It was the night I would realise I had slipped beyond what my younger self would have considered despicable. I didn't want her dead and I didn't pull the trigger. But I stood there and did nothing. I don't know if it was fear that if I did anything I would join her in the mud, or if I just no longer cared for strangers like I once did... But, I just stood there and let her die." What's a preacher doing making guns: * "Although I was a man of god, I was never naive enough to think that tempered violence was unnecessary for keeping the peace. Year by year, I found myself slipping. As the people around me cared more about seeing the guilty punished than about justice done, I felt myself no longer qualified to guide them away from that kind of thinking." * "Before I became a preacher, I was lost. Those times are long behind me, but had given me a talent with locks. I'm a capable locksmith and gunsmith but I don't have the talent for it that some people do." Who pulled the trigger: * "The man who pulled the trigger is a foul weasel of a man named 'Sly Eye' Moses and I think you already know who gave him the order. A couple of months ago I heard of a fella matching Sly Eye's description harassing towns further north of here. Hit a small town named something odd... Sundowner's Bluff or something" Charlie's Pistol 9550gp for +1 version of Seraphic pistol whose special ability can be used 1/day. http://www.fega.com/mp/gleason/18.jpg